Ed Czarnecki is senior director for Strategy and Government Affairs at Digital Alert Systems. He is the chair of the ATSC TG3-10 working group on emergency alerts and vice chair of the ATSC Advanced Emergency Information Implementation Team.
The role of TV broadcasters as first informers has never been as compelling as it is during these unprecedented times, highlighting how broadcasters are best positioned to assist local communities during times of crisis. This unprecedented health crisis affects broadcasters in every one of their many roles in their communities.
Broadcasters need to be prepared to meet the challenge of providing emergency information to their audiences while considering what future capabilities they may have with Next Generation TV.
Coping with the New Normal
Does the Emergency Alert System (EAS) have a role in this current public health crisis? So far, authorities have used EAS at least 36 times across the U.S. to provide COVID-19 related information and the use of EAS is likely only to increase until this public health emergency begins to subside. Local broadcasting is an important path for communicating emergency information and public safety officials are remembering this.
Local public safety agencies and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) expect broadcasters to have their emergency alert systems online and operating, and this means making sure they are properly configured, have the latest software updates and are properly secured.
- “Properly configured” includes making sure the appropriate EAS event codes and geo-codes are enabled, among other things. So far, among these 36 EAS activations, we’ve seen a variety of codes used – civil emergency (CEM), shelter in place (SPW) and local area emergency (LAE). It’s a good idea to double check your EAS gear as well as your state and local EAS plans to make sure you are ready to carry the event codes for your area of operation.
- Installing the latest software updates is not a trivial matter. Most EAS manufacturers have released software updates over the past few months that contain FCC compliance updates, major security patches and other functional improvements. If your EAS device is running on old software, you may have multiple security vulnerabilities (like any computer system) and may not be operating within some of the FCC updated EAS rules.
- Properly securing your device means – at a minimum – not exposing it directly to the internet. One security researcher recently disclosed the customer IP addresses of over 570 EAS devices that remain exposed to the internet despite years of warnings from manufacturers, the government and NAB. Most broadcast station equipment is not designed to be directly exposed to the internet and this includes EAS equipment due the sensitive nature of the system. In this time of increased teleworking and remote access, don’t put sensitive systems like EAS gear out on the internet.
Resurgence of Broadcast TV and EAS
As noted above, many authorities see local broadcasting as an important path for communicating emergency information. During this challenging time, broadcast TV is experiencing a resurgence. Viewership of live television rose by 14 percent in the week ending March 22, and up again another 3 percent over that by March 29, according to Nielsen. It may not be provocative to suggest that people are rediscovering broadcast TV in this unprecedented stay-at-home world. Audience attention to national and local news has also surged, according to Gallup.
Many authorities understand that not every TV station has a news department to broadcast COVID-related information and local instructions. So, they have turned to the tried and true EAS system to get stay-at-home messages out over every possible broadcast channel. However, EAS works at its best as a “bell ringer” – alerts that are short messages describing well-defined threats with a very specific call to action. In many cases the COVID-19 information being sent over EAS is best described as “emergency information” rather than alerting.
Both EAS and wireless emergency alerts (WEA) are designed for short bursts of urgent alerts and are not optimal for longer and more complex messages about emergency public information. Still, public safety officials across the nation have been relying on broadcasters using EAS to convey urgent stay-at-home instructions. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) recently weighed in, advising authorities to use the Civil Emergency Message and Local Area Emergency codes for this purpose and specifically not to use the Shelter In Place emergency message.
Today’s Challenges Point to Next Gen TV’s Capabilities
ATSC 3.0, or Next Gen TV, holds the potential to enhance TV station emergency communications to their audiences and create new value-added capabilities for stations based on these types of public information messages.
Advanced Emergency Information (AEI) is a service in Next Gen TV that provides a powerful new capability for messaging audiences, providing media-rich information from official and TV station sources. This new capability is not a replacement for EAS. It is a means to bridge the gap between alerts, emergency information and other urgent content that the station, particularly a newsroom, may want to make available to viewers.
How is AEI different from the current emergency alert system? Imagine the ability to provide targeted audiences with that same emergency information but expanding it to include additional content and media from the newsroom and providing this information in a way that the viewer can choose to access, rather than an intrusive EAS message that would interrupt the audio of your programming and impose a crawl on the screen. Add the ability to geotarget this type of emergency information to specific audiences and supplement it with graphics, video and even incorporate your station’s live stream of coverage of the event. All of this would be enacted without disrupting normal broadcast programming.
This next-generation emergency information capability provides the potential for a range of capabilities offered by television broadcasters to fixed, mobile and portable consumer devices that support these features, including:
- The AEI capability of Next Gen TV can support a broad range of urgent information far beyond the scope and abilities of today’s EAS for providing emergency information to the public as well as restricted messages to closed groups, such as first responders. This capability supports a wide range of multimedia content including cached or live media, multiple languages and features useful for app developers on mobile, portable and fixed Next Gen TV receivers.
- For TV broadcasters, the Next Gen TV standard allows station-driven emergency information to be integrated into a broad range of digital platforms, offering viewers the potential for individually-tailored information over a portfolio of products including TV, web, mobile and more.
Next Gen TV is fully capable of handling today’s EAS obligations, along with a powerful new range of emergency information capabilities. AEI will provide an attractive way for TV stations to provide more emergency information, including alerts, in a way that will be more useful for both the station and its audience. The EAS messages TV stations tend not to air could be repackaged as a less intrusive emergency information message that a viewer could access if they are interested. For TV stations, this advanced emergency information capability enables them to deliver viewers a richer experience of information with more multimedia and even links to other station resources and programming.